The Guermantes Way III p 607-626

p 607 | This castle, Château de Villebon, was the model for the Château de Guermantes.  It's located at #3 on this map. More photos here.  Proust used it as an early draft name for the Guermantes, but then re-edited (and camouflaged) the family & castle, referring now just to the Villebon - Gallardon - Courvoisier side of the family. Châteaudun is also a community in the  Eure-et-Loir department in northern France (probably not as grand).  The Rue de Grenelle is in Paris.
p 610 | Pliny the Younger (Roman writer). Mme Pauline de Simiane (1674-1737) was the granddaughter of Mme de Sévigné.
p 612 | fuliginous = sooty, murky, dark. Sui generis is a Latin phrase, meaning "of its own kind/genus" and hence "unique in its characteristics."
p 613 | Princess Bedr-el-Budur: Aladdin fell in love with this character from the Arabian Nights.
p 615 | Daniel Auber (French composer, 1782-1871) of operas such as Les diamants de la couronne, Le domino noir and Fra Diavolo.
p 616-17 | Prince / Princesse des Laumes: titles for Basin & Oriane before his father died & they became the Duc & Duchesse de Guermantes.
p 616 | "cutting the painter" :: an expression meaning, in terms of ships, making a clandestine departure, but also, in terms of an individual, gaining one's freedome, or departing this life. Ships' boats are secured alongside by means of their painters, and a silent or clandestine departure can only be made by cutting the painter and allowing the boat to drift silently away from the ship until it is out of earshot of those on board. cf. answers.com
p 617 | Évariste Desiré de Forges, vicomte de Parny (1753–1814), French poet, known for love poems & prose poems. Some of his work was banned.
p 619 | Charles Grandmougin (French playwright & librettist, 1850-1930); Gaston Lemaire (French composer, 1854-1928). Marquise de Souvré (friend of the Princesse de Parme).
p 626 | cupidity = inordinate desire for wealth; greed, avarice, lust.

The Guermantes Way III p 598-607

p 598 | Though there were several Princesses de Parme, the one in the book is a created composite character. One of the sources Proust used for her, according to George Painter's Marcel Proust: A Biography (v.2, p 97-98) was Princesse Mathilde Bonaparte, who also appears in the book as herself.
p 599 | ... Dresden figures....

p 600 | ... the wit of the Mortemarts...: a French family known for the esprit Mortemart, a particular type of wit which allowed impossible things to be said.
p 600 | "... supple undulation of those tresses of light whose loosened hairs run like flexible rays along the sides of a moss-agate..."
.

Moss-agate

p 602 | ...gave as its source the mythological impregnation of a nymph by a divine Bird... Yeah, I'll just go with Leda and the Swan here...
p 602 | Prince Gilbert de Guermantes (Basin's cousin; nephew of Mme de Villeparisis)
p 604 | Hannibal Barca, who threw snakes onto ships to win battles. Also the Barca family emblem in Flaubert's novel Salammbô.
p 605-7 | Marquise de Gallardon (née Courvoisier, the other side of the Guermantes family.)
p 606 | The Ligne and de La Trémoille families still exist.
p 606 | Perche, former province of northern France. (Percherons!)
p 606 | "And if but one is left, then that one will be me." (Et s'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-là !) Last line of Ultima Verba (ca. 1853) by Victor Hugo, in exile because he would not accept the reimposition of a Bonapartist monarchy under Napoleon III, the emperor's nephew, whom Hugo dubbed "Napoléon le petit."
p 607 | "Thanks to the gods..." From Andromaque by Racine, V v.

The Guermantes Way III p 569-575

p 571 | Hannibal and the battle of Cannae

p 572 | Ossian (legendary 3rd century Gaelic bard)

p 574 | Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), 18th-century French painter, considered a master of still life.




p 574 | Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, French painter who specialized in portraits executed in pastels.

p 575 | "We lack the wisdom to work backwards from the particular to the general..."

Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814

Manet, Olympia, 1863

The Guermantes Way III p 551-569

p 556 | "... at the time of Agadir..." : Agadir Crisis of 1911.  The second of the Moroccan crises (see Moroccan crisis, 1905) leading to the outbreak of World War I. The Germans sent the gunboat "Panther" to the Moroccan port of Agadir, claiming that the French had ignored the terms of the Algeciras Conference. This provoked a major war scare in Britain until the Germans agreed to leave Morocco to the French in return for rights in the Congo.
p 559 | "... their 1830 ties..."
p 559 | "... unassimilated Jews...", though he may mean Hasidim.
p 560-61: Opus franci-genum ("A work of French origin"); referring to Gothic architecture, as well as the "young sons of France" with their sculpted faces.
p 562 | Flag of Luxembourg
p 563 | Jockey-Club de Paris

p 565 | Albert I, Prince of Monaco (1848-1922)


p 569 | Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-69), literary critic.
| Mme Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin;
| Mme Jeanne-Françoise Récamier,
| Eléonore-Adèle d'Osmond, comtesse de Boigne.

The Guermantes Way III p 537-551

p 539 | Paris in fog
p 539 | Jews used to cover their heads with ashes in times of mourning...
p 540 | Nietzsche cut himself off from Wagner's music.... More on Proust and Nietzsche

p 544 | Le Figaro: French daily newspaper.

p 544 | Steeples at Martinville

p 547 | Pillar of Fire that guided the Hebrews.
p 548 | Arabian roc
p 548 | Zola trial  and this Zola trial


 

p 549 | Melanie Louise Sophie Renouard de Bussiere, better known under her married name Countess Edmond de Pourtales (1836-1914), was one of the "queens of Paris" under the Second Empire. Marquise de Galliffet.
p 549 | Revolving doors

p 550 | Dignus est intrare. Latin for "He is worthy to enter." Also, this phrase is found in Molière's comedy-ballet Le Malade imaginaire.
p 551 | Rond-Point of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées

And only 65 G's

The real first edition

And it's in Brooklyn!

The Guermantes Way III p 522-537

p 527 | Meudon: sw suburb of Paris, with hills.
p 527 | Adam Frans van der Meulen, (Flemish painter, 1634-94)

p 527 | Fleurus: Belgian town; Nijmegen: town in eastern Netherlands.

p 000 | Isle of Swans (Île aux Cygnes): small artificial island in the Seine in Paris.

p 000 | Islands of Brittany




p 000 | Boulevard des Capucines (Capuchin convent); Rue du Bac (ferry at quai Voltaire)


p 533 | "... marble goddess who had been carved in the act of springing from her pedestal..." This is not that statue (its dates are later), but it could be.





p 537 | "...at the corner of a window, as in a Gallé glass, a vein of crusted snow...": Art Nouveau etched glass pieces.

The Guermantes Way III p 498-522

p 502, 506 | Saint-André-des-Champs: Proust's fictional church near Combray, which throughout the novel comes to represent, through its Gothic sculptures of people, the essence of "Frenchness." He has related it to Francoise & Theodore. Here he sees Albertine's little peasant face.
p 503 | Mme. Blandais: minor character, wife of a LeMans notary Marcel meets on holiday at the Grand Hotel.
p 507 | A bergère is an enclosed upholstered French armchair with an upholstered back and armrests on upholstered frames.







p 507 | Yellow satin gown with black poppies... well, maybe something like this (but way nicer...)
p 508 | Schubert's Adieu (music);
"The song is not by Schubert, but by August Heinrich von Weyrauch. It was first published in 1824, to a text by Karl Friedrich Gottlob Wetzel. Schubert's name was first attached to the song in 1843. The author of the French text to which the song is now sung ("Voici l'instant supreme...") is thought to have been Edouard Belanger. (Reed, John. The Schubert Song Companion, page 12, via books.google.com).  (Note that the lines quoted are not part of these lyrics, as far as I can tell.)
p 514-15 | "Fabrice's aunt... Count Mosca": reference to characters in Stendahl's novel The Charterhouse of Parma.
p 517-18 | Book of Esther; Ahasuerus (later Xerxes) is given as the name of the King of Persia in the Book of Esther; Mordecai was there also.
p 520 | Théâtre-Français = Comédie-Française .
p 520 | Fernand Labori was the lawyer for Dreyfus & Zola.
p 521 | May be Elizabeth, Princess of Ligne.

100 YEARS

Proustians Around NYC this month...

On Reading Proust

New York Review of Books has this article in the latest issue: On Reading Proust:  Stephen Breyer, interviewed by Ioanna Kohler

The following interview with Justice Stephen Breyer was conducted in French by Ioanna Kohler and was initially published in La Revue des Deux Mondes in Paris as part of a special issue entitled “Proust vu d’Amérique.” It appears here in translation.

Surprisingly good.